1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to social network analytics.
2. Background
Social network analysis software facilitates quantitative analysis of social networks by describing network features via numerical or visual representation. Social networks may include groups such as families, a group of individuals identifying themselves as friends, project teams, classrooms, sports teams, legislatures, nation-states, membership on networking websites like TWITTER® or FACEBOOK®.
Some social network analysis software can generate social network features from raw social network data formatted in an edge list, adjacency list, or adjacency matrix or socio-matrix. These social network features may be presented using some kind of visualization. Some social network analysis software can perform predictive analysis. Predictive analysis, such as peer influence modeling or contagion modeling, may use social network phenomena such as a tie to predict social network outcomes. An example of predictive analysis is to use individual level phenomena to predict the formation of a tie or edge.
When analyzing many social networks, an analyst may desire to include many different parameters simultaneously, though in some cases this type of analysis is impossible due to the lack of available techniques. For example, simultaneously including different types of relationships, different topics of discussion, different roles, properties of the people and organizations involved, as well as states of the social network at different times, may be useful when performing social network analysis but is currently impossible. In other words, to date, no single social network analysis tool can perform all of the above aspects in a single representation. A tight coupling of content and topics of discussion with social networks is currently unavailable, but may be desirable because such information can shed light on social network data. These capabilities may be particular desirable for social networks that involve communication between the participants, such as those constituted by or supported by social media. Social media include but are not limited to FACEBOOK®, TWITTER®, or GOGGLE PLUS®.
Thus, certain problems in social network analysis remain unsolved. For example, there is no approach or data visualization tool that can incorporate all of the above aspects in a single representation and provide a unified solution to the depiction of the social network. Another related problem is that current technologies are unable to represent and summarize multiple types of relationships in a temporal sequence simultaneously. For example, available tools do not provide a view of time, topics, and ranked importance of entities in the social network.